George Lucas Explains How Obi-Wan Kenobi And Darth Vader Never Fought Between Their Battle At Mustafar And The Death Star
John F. Trent
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Star Wars creator George Lucas explained why Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi never fought between their battle at Mustafar and the Death Star despite the entire premise of the Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi series revolving around a rematch between the two before their meeting on the Death Star.
(L-R): Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) in Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Lucas provided commentary on the original Star Wars film for the release of the DVDs back in 2004.
As part of his commentary Lucas detailed, “There’s another story going on here where Vader senses that Obi-Wan is on the Death Star. One of the fun things for me about this movie was that I was making it episode 4, which is why I was so adamant about having that on the film. There’s a lot of backstory that just–. You know, it’s interesting the film was successful as it is and I hardly told any of the story.”
“But the other backstory is they had this whole confrontation thing and Obi-Wan almost killed him and he put him in this suit and everything and now they’re confronting each other again after all these years,” he added.
Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi faces off against David Prowse and James Earl Jones as Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
Not only did Lucas make these comments back in 2004, but he also made it clear back in 1981 during the Revenge of the Jedi Story Conference. Lucas’ comments were recently collected in Star Wars Archives 1999-2005 by Paul Duncan back in 2020.
Duncan shared an excerpt of the book to Twitter that shows Lucas’ commentary from the Story Conference.
Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith (2005), Lucasfilm
As part of his commentary he details how Kenobi and Vader never encountered each other after Mustafar, “Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can’t raise Luke himself, because he’s a wanted man.”
“Leia and Luke’s mother go to Alderaan and are taken by the king there, who is a friend of Ben’s. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died,” he continued.
Lucas added, “I think you can make Ben take the blame for Vader. ‘I should have given him more training. I should have sent him to Yoda, but I thought I could be as good a teacher as Yoda. I wish that I could stop the pestilence that I’ve unleashed on the galaxy.’ His burden is that he feels responsible for everything that Vader has done.”
Star Wars Archives 1999-2005 (2020), TASCHEN Books
Author J.W. Rinzler published similar quotations in his book The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi back in 2013.
In Rinzler’s book, Lucas details, “The president is turning into an Emperor and Luke’s mother suspects that something has happened to her husband. She is pregnant. Anakin gets worse and worse, and finally Ben has to fight him and he throws him down into a volcano and Vader is all beat up.”
“Now, when he falls into this pit, his other arm goes and his leg and there is hardly anything left of him by the time the Emperor’s troops fish him out of the drink. Then when Ben finds out that Vader has been fished out and is in the hands of the Empire, he is worried about it. He goes back to Vader’s wife and explains that Anakin is the bad guy, the one killing all the Jedi,” explains Lucas.
He goes on to detail, “When he goes back his wife, Mrs. Skywalker has had the kids, the twins, so she has these two little babies who are six months old or so. So everybody has to go into hiding.”
Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005), Lucasfilm
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“The Skywalker line is very strong with the Force, so Ben says, ‘I think we should protect the kids, because they may be able to help us right the wrong that your husband has created in the universe.’ And so Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow,” says Lucas.
From there he explains, “Ben can’t raise Luke himself, because he’s a wanted man. Leia and Luke’s mother go to Alderaan and are taken in by the king there, who is a friend of Ben’s. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died.”
Lucas is then asked if Leia knows her mother dies to which he responds, “Yes, so we can bring that out, when Luke is talking to her, she can say that her mother died when ‘I was two years old.’”
The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (2013), Random House Worlds
Despite all of this evidence, Lucasfilm, under Kathleen Kennedy decided to throw it all into the trashcan to create their Obi-Wan Kenobi show that saw Kenobi confront Vader not just once between their battle at Mustafar and the Death Star, but a second time.
Not only do they confront each other, but their initial battle is an extremely poorly written scene that sees Vader easily destroy Kenobi. However, while Vader wastes Kenobi the pure stupidity of the scene comes from Vader allowing to Kenobi be rescued by a droid. Vader just stands there and watches as the droid comes in and grabs Kenobi. He does not take any action whatsoever.
Thus Lucasfilm trashed the original intention of George Lucas for a cheap gimmick.
(L-R): Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in a scene from Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of Lucas’ comments regarding the fact that Kenobi and Vader did not face each other between Mustafar and the Death Star?
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